House of Wonder (14 page)

•   •   •

When Rose and I left Maggie's house that night, with Rose's tired, sugar-racked body slung over my hip, I thanked Lance for dinner. “It was so nice of you to make your mom's meatballs,” I said.

“Remember last year?” said Maggie. “How we tried to order pizza?”

I did remember. We waited for over two hours for it to be delivered, and when it finally arrived, it was stiff and cold. “Warren says Halloween is the busiest night of the year.” I thought about my brother, as he was surely racing around Harwick in his thick, gray Pizzeria Brava sweatshirt, rushing from house to house carrying his square red insulated bag. His brow would be furrowed; his still battered-looking face would be turned downward toward a ticket as he asked, the words coming out slowly,
Three Meat Maniac Pizzas?
Then he'd slide the boxes out, his thin shoulders slumped, watching as wallets were pulled from pockets and purses, as bills were taken out. His body would remain still but his gaze would move around the room, taking in the behavior and habitat of these normal families the way a scientist would observe a species of interest. “He'll probably have to hit half of Harwick tonight.”

•   •   •

It wasn't until Mom called the next day that I learned the number of houses Warren visited on Halloween: fifty. He
delivered pizzas to fifty Harwick families. Seven of them called to complain. It was the way he looked, with his stitches, his bruises. It was the way he acted, with his watching, his stillness. It was everything about him.
We hate to make a stink, but . . .

At noon on November 1, his boss, Fung Huang, phoned Warren and asked him to come in. He told him that he could no longer keep him employed as a driver for Pizzeria Brava due to customer complaints. Warren stood there for a moment, as if the information Fung had relayed took a long and circuitous path to his understanding. Then, when Warren seemed to fully comprehend that he had just been fired, he brought his hand to the top of his head and pressed down, saying only, “I'm sorry about this, Fung.”

“I'm just so worried about him.” Mom's anxiety was reverberating through the phone line.

She explained that Fung had called her after Warren left, warning her about what had happened. He was apologetic but said that he couldn't afford to lose business, not since Dino's had expanded its delivery area. And these complaints weren't the first Fung had had about Warren.
He makes some of the customers uncomfortable.

I pressed the black receiver to my ear, feeling Maggie's eyes on me from across the office. “Where is he now?” I asked.

I heard Mom's rush of breath. “He didn't tell me anything. He just took his fishing pole and tackle box and left.” I pictured Warren driving toward the black water of a river. He would stand at its edge, surrounded by silence. He'd cast in his line and finally there would be a tug. He'd pull a fish from the cold, its body a solid length of muscle, its gills splayed and searching. He'd gently pull the hook from its mouth and admire it for a
moment, appreciate the singularity of its existence, the imperative of which was to simply survive. Then he'd set the fish back into the water, waiting for its tail to begin undulating again—just like our grandfather had taught him—before releasing it.
There you go,
he'd say.
There you go.
That's what I imagined anyway; Warren never kept them anymore.

“I'll come home,” I said.

“No, Jenna,” said Mom, as if this was a burden she needed to bear alone. “It's all right.”

•   •   •

Warren didn't get home until nearly one in the morning. Mom called me when he arrived. My head jerked away from the computer where I was working on a new package for Apothecary and I answered the phone. Whispering, my mother said that she had just seen his car pull into the driveway. “Thank goodness,” she said. “Thank goodness.” So relieved was she that she forgot to mention the red and blue police lights that churned the darkness as they traveled down Royal Court, preceding Warren's return home by half an hour. As soon as he walked in the door, the fact of them seemed a secondary concern, a false alarm. It wasn't until the next day that she heard about the robbery.

Thirst

1965

P
erhaps she heard footsteps or breathing. Perhaps she saw some movement in her eye's periphery. Or perhaps it was instinctual, the knowledge that Hattie was behind her. With her hip propping open the refrigerator door, with the milk jug already in her hand, Priscilla did it anyway. She poured a glass, then brought it to her lips, tipping it back and drinking it down. And when the last drops slid into her mouth, she wiped her lips with the back of her wrist and pushed the door shut. But now that her defiance was complete, she no longer felt quite so brave. Now that her defiance was complete, she didn't want to turn around.

Hattie took her time before she spoke. “You already had your eight ounces this morning.”

“I was thirsty,” answered Silla, sounding more confident than she felt. Her head was hinged forward, her fingers still gripping the handle of the refrigerator.

“You think that milk is free?” asked Hattie.

“No,”
responded Silla, with all the sass of the teenager that she was.

“Your daddy is out there working hard,” said Hattie, the words meandering out, “and you're just going to stand there and guzzle down his money.”

“I don't think Daddy would mind.”

“Oh, you don't?” asked Hattie, her voice rising with false innocence.

Silla wheeled around, her cheeks a furious red. “He drives a Cadillac and you get your hair done twice a week.” What she said next was unplanned. “Besides, it's my mama's money anyhow.”

Hattie's face curved into a reptilian smile and an observation that lodged almost out of Silla's reach was just how empty those eyes looked. Just how black.

“Oh, your mama's money,” said Hattie. “Your wonderful
mama's
money.” Hattie reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out her cigarettes, tapping one out and bringing it to her lips. Her head bowed as the lighter sparked and when she lifted her chin again, the tip of the cigarette brightened at the inhalation. “Tell me something,” she said, the smoke lazily leaving her mouth. “Do you know where your mama
is
?”

Silla drew back, silent. Speaking of her dead mother with Hattie felt heretical, the worst sort of sin. Again, Hattie smiled. “Well, then. By all means, don't let me stop you from drinking down your dear departed
mama's
money.” Then Hattie started out of the kitchen, crossing slowly in front of Silla, her hips
moving with their usual pendulum-like rhythm, her cigarette burning between her fingers.

As soon as Hattie had left the kitchen, Silla turned and burst out the screen door, not slowing as she took the steps and marched down the driveway. She imagined herself leaving. She imagined never coming back. And as she walked, escape seemed possible. Her steps were fueled by the image of Hattie having to explain to her father that she was gone. She pictured her father slamming his fist down, screaming at Hattie; she pictured him shaking her. And Silla kept walking.
He'll be so angry with her,
she told herself. She wanted so much to believe it. And so she kept walking.

If she had a plan, it was to go to the bus station. To board a coach to California. Never mind that she didn't have the fare. Never mind that she didn't know a soul outside Texas. It was a warm evening but comfortably so. The sort that brought people onto their porches, letting the humid air surround their work-weary limbs. It was gradual, Silla's realization that she was walking to nothing and to no one. That she was just a girl. That she could be devoured by this world.
Hey, baby girl!
she heard a man in a tank top call from a passing car.

When dark had settled in, she finally turned around. She walked even more quickly home, her heart lurching and skittish in her chest. And when she rounded the curve of Beechnut Street, her shirt was as damp as her skin, and she was both relieved and terrified to catch a glimpse of her house. She saw that Hattie's car was gone. The only light left on in the house was in the attic. No one ever went in the attic except Silla. That's where they kept her mama's things—her pictures, her clothes. After Hattie and her father had married, her mother's possessions had
made their way slowly up, until there was nothing left of Martha Briggs anywhere in the house except for the attic and Silla's room. And though Silla's legs were bone-tired, she began to run. Up the driveway, onto the porch. She ran into the house faster than she had burst out of it.

Hattie had left it open for her, the entrance to the attic. Its old wooden ladder extended down to the floor; its yellow light spilled out into the darkness. Silla wasn't higher than two rungs when she could already see what had been done. Her breath turned panicked until it ripped out as a sob. Reaching the top, she threw herself on the landing as if onto a grave. Nothing had prepared her for this tidal wave of loss. Nothing had prepared her for seeing the room empty, completely devoid of its contents. Finally and fully, she understood the consequences of crossing Hattie.

Then, suddenly and urgently, Silla sat up. Still weeping, she scrambled back down the ladder and hurried to her room. There, with shaking hands, she gathered up the four photos of her mother that remained. She hid two under her dresser, and two in the back of her closet. Still in the clothes that she had been walking in, she shut off her light and pulled up her covers. And with her back to the door, she stared at the wall until she heard Hattie's car on the drive, until she heard the clack of her heels through the house, her steps slow and stalking.

The next morning she would get up, she would dress for school, and she would keep her eyes down at breakfast. She would drink her eight ounces of milk. And not one drop more.

Mrs. Castro

B
obby ran his hand over his chin and I noticed the thin lines that shot out like rays from the corners of his eyes as he squinted against both the cold air and the bright light of the park. “Yeah, I guess they got something like eight hundred dollars in cash, a laptop, and Dean's coin collection.” With his characteristic calm, he was filling me in on the theft that had King's Knoll atwitter.

I pressed my hands deeper into the pockets of my jacket. “But the Doogans were out when it happened?”

He nodded. “They were in the city. And obviously they locked the doors before they left,” he said with a shrug, “but there was no sign of forced entry.”

“That's pretty creepy.” I heard laughter and squeals from
Gabby and Rose. They were going down the slide on top of each other, their limbs as twisted and tangled as their voices. Gordo circled below, thinking that he was part of the fun, looking elated and insane as he struggled to lift his disproportioned body into playful half leaps.

My mother and I had been painting the house columns when Bobby's car had driven past; Rose was inside watching Warren finish one of his planes, listening as he narrated his every move while Gordo lay next to him.
You want to balance the wing at thirty percent back from the leading edge,
he'd said while Rose rested her cheek against his desk. When Warren was around, Rose and Gordo both preferred him to all other life-forms.

Bobby had given his horn a short, friendly beep and waved in greeting. I had waved back, then looked over to see my mother almost smiling as her brush moved up and down the tall column, her hair again pulled away from her face by a kerchief, her thick maroon parka covering her body from shoulder to knee. “You enjoy yourself around him,” she'd observed.

“Yeah,” I'd said lightly, looking only at the patch that I was painting. “Rose and Gabby have fun together.”

My mother had nodded and continued painting. A few minutes later, my phone had rung and I'd pulled it from my back pocket.
Bobby Vanni.
Again, I glanced at my mother, then answered.

“Hey,” he said. His voice was deep and warm as he asked me if I wanted to take the girls to the park.

“Uhhh, well, right now I'm helping my mom. . . .” I wondered if any other excuse would have sounded quite so girlish.

But my mother interrupted me. “Go on, honey,” she said,
her eyes on another car making its way down the street. It was Beth Castro, Zack's mother. Mom watched her intently, her mouth a tight line as Mrs. Castro turned smoothly into her driveway. “It's getting late for this. I was just thinking of calling it a day, anyhow.”

Twenty minutes later, I was standing next to Bobby, watching as Gabby leapt up to grab the monkey bars, swinging her legs after her and hooking them over the metal rod so that she was hanging upside down. Gordo found this thrilling, and tried to lick her face while his tail thumped against the ladder, causing it to ring the hollow sound of a broken bell. “Gordo!” I said, clapping my hands sharply. “Hey!” I didn't want his affection to make her fall, but Gabby just reached her arms around Gordo's neck as she continued to hang. “Oh, my gosh,” I said, marveling at her dexterity. “Look at her!” Her coat was submitting to gravity, exposing her tiny belly to the cold air, and she had Gordo bathing her face in saliva, but still she hung elegantly, her long brown hair brushing the ground.

“I know,” said Bobby, with a small chuckle. “She's a total monkey.” He paused, giving what he said next unintended weight. “Her mother's like that, too. She used to be a dancer.”

It seemed to be a door, an invitation to ask more, so I did. “Does Gabby still see her mom often?”

Bobby took a breath, and held it in his lungs. It was the way a man might cover up pain from a punch. “No,” he finally said. “She lives out in California. She has a yoga studio out there, so she doesn't come back east much.” He looked at his beautiful little girl, who had righted herself, her feet once again upon the earth. “And Gabs only goes out a couple of times a year.” He chuckled at Gordo, who was now lying on his back and pawing
the air, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth in a state of spastic bliss.

“Rose doesn't see her dad much either,” I said. “He lives in Japan.”

Bobby took another breath and nodded, the rush of air over the back of his throat a quiet lament.

“I wish Gabby could see Mia more often. But you know how it is.”

“Yeah. I do.” That was all I needed to say. And though I still hadn't heard from Duncan, hadn't received confirmation of his return to New York, I thought about him coming back to the area. About what it would be like to have him blow more frequently and with greater force into Rose's life. To have him blow back out again.

“I don't think Mia was ready to have kids,” said Bobby. His voice was deep and low; his eyes remained on Gabby. “At the time anyway . . .” Gordo ran a circle around the girls and came bounding toward us as fast as he could, which wasn't all that fast, and I saw one side of Bobby's face lift into a smile at the sight of him.

I stared at Bobby's profile, the lines of it cutting against dusk's deepening sky. And without thinking I leaned closer to him and hooked my arm through one of his. Feeling the heft of his shoulder, the strength that was there, I let my head tilt to rest against it. Maybe it was that I'd known him my whole life.Maybe that was why I did it. Maybe it was the sound of our daughters' voices, like the chatter of birds. Maybe it was the deep kinship I felt for him because he was raising a daughter on his own. But I wasn't thinking about any of that. I was thinking only that it was nice to have a place to rest my head. I held my
body very still, the way I did when I was cold, as if the energy required to tense my muscles would warm them by some infinitesimal degree. “I can't believe they're not freezing,” I said, nodding toward the girls. “The temperature is really starting to drop.”

Bobby's chest rose and fell with a breath. “Yeah, it's getting late,” he said. And in his voice was the regret I also felt, that we had to move from this spot. Then he angled his head down toward me, his lips at my forehead, so close that I could feel the warmth of his breath, his mouth slightly open in advance of words he had yet to speak. “I should get going,” he said. “I have to be at the hospital.”

I let go of his arm and smiled. “This was fun.”

His brow tensed in thought and his gaze turned inward. “Maybe,” he began tentatively, “we can get together for dinner sometime?”

“Sure,” I said, lightly. “Rosie would love that.”

He looked at me, pausing before he said, “Or we could do something with just you and me.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “we could do that.”

His smile broadened and we remained eye to eye for a moment, until he turned toward the girls. “Gabs! We gotta get going!”

Gabby and Rose both froze and looked at us.

“Come on, Rosie! Gabby's daddy has to get to work!” I tried to whistle, but it sounded only like the wind. “Gordo!” I called.

Rose ignored me, but Gordo came bounding obediently in my direction. “He's a great dog,” said Bobby, as he watched him.

“He is a great dog.”

“Where'd you get him?”

“Well . . . ,” I started, and as Bobby and Gabby walked Rose and me back to the house, I told him about how we came to acquire Gordo, about how when I went to one of those big-box pet stores to get a goldfish for Rose, a local shelter was there holding an adoption drive. They were set up in the center of the huge space, with a temporary fence around a green Astroturf carpet. There were several dogs and cats in cages around the perimeter. While we perused the store, collecting fish food and colored stones, I watched as families walked by, pointing at the cages. Every so often, a dog would be taken onto the green for playtime with a potential new owner. Gordo sat there, watching every person who approached with his goofy, cross-eyed eagerness, his tail going like it had a motor on it. Five dogs were there that day. Gordo was the only one that nobody wanted to play with. “Hey, Rosie,” I had said. “Let's go meet that doggy.”

As we approached his cage, Gordo had tried his very best to be still, but his seated haunches quivered with anticipation. Once the door was open, he bounded out, his whole body wagging with the force of a salmon trying to leap upstream. Rose wasn't yet two and could barely speak, but she laughed at Gordo, the fat insides of her cheeks showing through the enormity of her smile. I scratched his head, and he looked at me like I was Jesus.

“Why hasn't this guy been adopted?” I asked.

The woman from the shelter joined in by petting Gordo's fur, which was a dull brown with gray patches. “It's kind of a beauty contest with adoptions,” she said sadly. I grinned hard to fight the tears that were rimming my eyes as I jostled his ears. And instead of a goldfish, we left with Gordo.

“Gabby would love to have a dog,” said Bobby.

“She can play with Gordo anytime she wants,” I offered, as we approached my mother's back deck. We took only a few more paces before I became aware of the shouting, the bursts of unintelligible words echoing through the neighborhood. My pace quickened as I heard them, and Bobby's sped up to keep time with mine. We glanced at each other, silently communicating our confusion and concern as the girls trailed behind us. There were two voices. As I drew closer to Royal Court, I heard that—even in anger—my mother's long, slow lapping vowels couldn't be mistaken. I turned to Bobby. “Can you keep an eye on Rosie for a minute?” I asked. Then I broke into a jog, Gordo running next to me.

I hurried through the side yard, between Mom's house and the Fitzpatricks', past Warren's car in the driveway, and my car in the street. Past the Dietzes' and the Rignarellis'. Past a lawn sign with Lydia's smiling face. The words were clearer as they rolled in from somewhere down the street, but I still couldn't see my mother. Then I heard Warren's name and wanted to reel back. The sound of it was like walking forcefully into a glass door. But I kept going, filling my lungs as the chilly air and anxiety brought cold heat to my cheeks. As soon as Squire Lane was in view, I saw Mom standing on the Castros' front porch, illuminated by the floodlights overhead as if she were on a stage.

Mrs. Castro loomed in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest, her face pressing forward as her shrill voice delivered its barbs. “He's seventeen!” she yelled. “Of course he's going to be upset that his crazy neighbor stole his mountain bike!”

“Warren did
not
steal his
mountain bike
!” shouted my mother. “He's never stolen anything in his life!”

“Go tell that to the Doogans! They're out eight hundred dollars!”

I stopped at the curb. Gordo continued down the street before realizing that I wasn't next to him, then circled back around. Bounding toward me, he thought it was all a game, that we were going for a run.

“Mom!” I said desperately. She startled and looked back at me. Beth Castro straightened up, almost regally, and stood firmly in the entrance to her house. Looking at me for just a moment, she turned her attention back to my mother. “I just think that before you come over here, lobbing accusations at
my
son—”

“Accusations?
” interrupted my mother. “You admitted that Zack beat up—”

But Beth Castro's voice overrode Mom's, her eyes bugging out as she spoke. “Priscilla,” she said, holding up one finger of warning, “you had better look at the whole picture.”

“Mom,”
I called again.
“Please.”

My mother let her head drop. “This cost my son his job,” she muttered back at Mrs. Castro, as she started for the steps.

“Delivering
pizza
,” said Mrs. Castro—her final blow.

Gordo trotted up the driveway to meet her, but I waited on the curb before I laid my hand on her back and walked silently with her toward her house, Gordo's claws tapping on the pavement.

“Zack Castro was the one who beat up your brother, Jenna,” said my mother, her emotions too wild and unhinged for any
particular one to dominate. She wasn't just mad or sad or hurt or scared. She was all of them. “He thinks Warren stole his mountain bike.” She released a sputter that was somewhere between a laugh and a cry.

We walked silently back through the neighborhood, which seemed alert in its stillness, a village of murmurs and stares. Since I'd left the park, the sun had nearly sunk below the trees, leaving the sky an inky blue against which the houses glowed with an electric daylight. I held my arms tight across my chest as I watched my feet move over the black asphalt.

“Mom,” I said, picturing her standing on the Castros' front porch, making her emotional, impulsive defense. “You shouldn't have gone over there like that. It didn't help Warren.”
Those Parsonses,
the neighbors were probably saying.
Tut-tut.
And though Mom didn't respond, her body seemed to slow a bit, as if another weight had been added. We walked back through the side yard and from across the park, I saw Bobby holding the back door of his mother's house open for Rose and Gabby.

“I'm just gonna . . . ,” I said, gesturing toward the Vannis' house. “Can you take Gordo?”

Mom nodded. “Go ahead,” she said.

I jogged through the park, aware that Bobby needed to get to work. Through the glass back door, I could see that he was peeling off Rose's jacket, while his mother tended to Gabby's. Mr. Vanni was standing at the counter, his arm propped on its edge for support. I hurried up the steps and rapped lightly on the door.

Immediately, I had all the Vannis' attention. Bobby reached for the knob. “Is everything okay?” he whispered as I entered the bright warmth of their kitchen. I could hear the TV blaring
from the next room; Linda and Sal must have been watching the evening news.